


How-to: Landfall and You

by orphan_account



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Alternate Universe - Space, Arranged Marriage, Cocky Space Smugglers, Intergalactic Warfare, M/M, Mpreg, Multiple Pov, References to Genocide, Robot/Human Relationships, Royalty, Sexual Slavery, Space Opera, dystopian societies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-10 12:31:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4391963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan Howlett is the best at what he does—on a time budget and need to hotfoot it? His ship can make it in half that time. Mercenaries from The Robot Empire on your tail and gotta split quick? He’s your guy. Thing is though, he didn’t make it this far as an intergalactic smuggler without a little thing called <i>common sense</i>. So when his first potential clients in months show up around the same time Imperial troops start paying housecalls to derelict space, Logan is suitably unimpressed. He’s even less impressed when one of them happens to be carrying the Empire’s heir.</p><p>A Saga-inspired AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow managed to start this when I was high off pain meds and thought it was a good idea. You don't need to have read Saga to enjoy this (hopefully!) but I cannot recommend it enough.

“Absolutely not.”

On the other side of the cramped booth, Logan’s first potential clients in well over a month share a nervous, twitchy look. He’d noticed the second he’d laid eyes on them that they aren’t from around this sector of space—too skittish, soft and well fed; he’s used to undernourished migrants and world-weary, disgruntled interspacers. Logan had his doubts, and every single one points to them being  _Terrestrians_ , of all fucking things.

The one with the glasses stops picking at the crumbling edge of the tabletop long enough to hesitantly meet Logan’s eyes. “You mean—”

“I _mean_ ,” Logan hisses, dropping the words low beneath his breath. He side-eyes the bar on the far end of the room—they’re tucked as far as possible from the other goers, not to mention the fact that this joint is one of the seedier places in the Boonies. But certain talk draws unwanted attention. “There’s a war going on out there. And you want—fuck, tell me I didn’t hear that right.”

Glasses chooses that moment to cast his nervous gaze toward the bar, but he isn’t nearly as subtle about it. Hell, the kid looks like he’s about to go up against a _firing squad_.

At the kid’s side, his friend, the one Logan has a harder time getting a read off, for all the guy seems to be little more than a teenager swaddled up in an overlarge poncho—as if this sector _isn’t_ in the thick of the sweltering solstice months—gets this resigned look on his face.

“Mr. Howlett,” Poncho says, and Logan’s gotta hand it the kid, those baby blues can turn to steel double-quick. “We require safe passage to Landfall’s moon, Wreath. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Preferably, we need be there before the week is out.”

Logan immediately reaches for his beer, finds it empty, and settles for rubbing a meaty hand down his grizzled face. Damn, he needs a hot shower.

“All right. Thing is? I don’t ask questions. Sure as hell ain’t gonna ask why Terrestrians straight off the boat from the Empire homeworld are so eager to get to the heart of a _war zone_.” The twin looks of horror on both the kids’ faces bring Logan a sort of perverse joy, but he moves on, “What I can’t just ignore is the _indefinite war_ part of the equation. It’s not that simple. I’ve done some risky bullshit in my time, but Landfallians have got that particular moon on house arrest. And I’d rather not die spectacularly tryin’ to hop the fence.”

“Mr. Howlett, please, you have to understand. We’re—”

“Separatists?” Logan snorts and waves his empty tankard at a passing waitress. “Sided with the moonies, have you? I’ll admit, not something you hear from Terrestrians every day. I’m guessing Empire propaganda isn’t what it used to be.”

The first kid, Glasses, inhales a sharp breath. There’s awe in his voice when he states, “You’re one, too.”

He turns to Poncho for guidance, but the other kid is too busy watching Logan with unnerving, knowing eyes.

“Of course Mr. Howlett is one of us,” Poncho eventually says. Then more direct: “And that’s exactly why you _must_ help us.”

“Look, kid,” Logan says, “You wouldn’t know it livin’ planetside your entire life, but out here? Just about every sorry sack worth their own shit hates the bluebloods and their pet project. Wings have committed enough genocide goin’ after Horns that the rest of us are just a cute side dish of collateral to them. Ain’t a lick of difference you could make to change the tides of war other than getting yourself killed. Hard to swallow, yeah, but it’s something we all gotta accept.”

When the three of them first sat down, Logan had offered to pay for a round of the bar’s shitty tasteless ‘shine, which happens to be the only good thing this shithole can scrounge up under the strict trade laws the Empire’s been enacting in the upper sectors. Glasses had politely declined, while Poncho instead endeavored their purple-skinned Rylian waitress for some ghastly, lemon-flavored sugar concoction she brought out in an actual fuckin’ wineglass.

Now, his fine-boned fingers peek out from beneath the poncho’s enormous folds and curl around the stem as he lifts it for a long, graceful sip.

If Logan was twenty years younger and the kid wasn’t fresh jailbait, he’d allow himself to admit just how annoyingly red those lips are. Instead, he has to contain the urge to roll his eyes.

Terrestrians, he recalls, have always been the _privileged_ type.

“You are wrong in that respect,” Poncho states at length, calm as you please. His blue eyes flick Logan’s way again, haunting against the kid’s pale skin. “My friend and I have in our possession classified documents that, once in the right hands, will save the lives of the thousands still living on Wreath. As you may be able to guess, they are much too sensitive to discuss in this...,” he gives the rest of the bar a slow glanceover, though any assessment of it is shadowed by the nervousness that creeps back into his voice, ”eatery.”

At his side, Glasses raises his hands as if he’s five seconds from motherhening the shit out of the other kid—funny, given both are equally a mess.

“Should I show him, Charles?” Glasses whispers.

Poncho—Charles, apparently—nods sharply.

Then Glasses is reaching beneath the table and setting a briefcase up top. He thumbs the clasps for a moment, hesitating, before opening it just a crack. It’s barely space to see squat, but somehow just enough. Logan's eyes linger on the contents of the briefcase for an overlong moment, his expression hardening.

He cuts the crap.

All right. So they _do_ mean business.

“I’ll help you,” Logan says finally. Frankly, none of this even feels real, if that says anything about the shit they’re about to be in. “But not here. I can get you off this outpost within an hour, that good by you?”

Of course, not a few seconds after he asks it, an entire _patrol_ of Imperial troops walk through the door.

Well, fuck.


	2. Chapter 2

If Logan were to pick the precise moment when the excrement hit the air conditioning, so to speak, he’d have a hard time of it. But really, it all began that morning with the shittiest cup of coffee this side of the Dalos Quadrant.

Waking up on Tarsac-483 to the stink of bogsweat and uncoveted Tralfamadorian hospitality was part of the job these days. Several months in the open black with no company aside from the hum of his ship beneath his feet had drained him, admittedly, though it didn’t save him the dread of a fuel pitstop on the closest outpost at the time. Times like these, Logan never stayed grounded longer than he had to, not if he could manage it—he’d gotten the tip a few years back that the Empire had an official Excision List a mile long, and his name fit somewhere near the top of it. Problem is, he’s been too careful to give them anything but that. A name.

Of course, the first hint that everything was heading south came the previous evening. He got his ship into the station’s shop—more barebones and understaffed than he’d seen in a while—the second he docked, and they told him not twenty minutes later that Rogue’s got a hosed regulator and a couple torn valves belowdeck. Then they asked to see his identification, some proof of ownership, and wasn’t that just _peachy_.

Once that mess was sorted out, Logan ended up at the short end of the nearest bar, tired and waiting on a time estimate that was two digits longer than he’d intended. So he shot the shit for a while, listened to the barkeep mutter off and on about Empire prohibition laws, then shoved off in search of a decent bunk for what remained of the station’s night cycle.

There’s a reason Logan doesn’t linger in holes like these, and it began at seven in the morning, Terrestria time.

“Incoming transmission for a Mr. _Logan_ ,” he hears over the gel-comm as he pulls it from the wall and hastily presses it to his ear. He sits up in bed before he’s even finished blinking the bleariness from his eyes, the sound of the bunk creaking almost too loud in the closet-size dormitory.

The fact that most of Tarsac-483’s inhabitants are Tralfamadorians is a testament to how far down the shitter Logan already is. Case in point: manually operated transmission and repugnantly outdated technology. Gel-comms are only used on Tralfamadore and its presiding territories, namely because the device is handheld, and in usual Tralfamadorian style, the mouthpiece looks and smells like the jellofied bog bile natural to their home planet. It’s fucking disgusting, is what it is.

“Yeah? Well hell, you’re talkin’ to ‘im,” Logan grunts into the receiver, despising every second of it.

“Truly,” the Tralfamadorian operator responds, and it somehow makes one word sound about as dry as a sarlacc pit. “You have a connector from your ship. I will now patch them through.”

 _Yeah thanks_ , Logan almost bites. “Sure thing, bub,” he says instead.

Then there’s a click, and the sound of a staticy dialtone Logan’s always hated about older landlines. He has time to flick on the greylight and pull his pants back on before the other end picks up. And really, he should’ve known bullshit comes in threes.

“Logan,” says Scott through the line, all easy and how-you-do, like he hasn’t been dodging Logan’s calls for the past two months. “Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Not at all, sunshine,” Logan replies, just as calm— _See Scott, I can be pleasant_ , is what he doesn’t say, albeit with some difficulty. “To what do I owe the morning housecall?”

“A job, naturally,” Scott continues, unbothered. “And an update on The Phoenix’s activity in that sector.”

In any normal case Logan would be worried about hacking or comm bugs, but the one thing he can say about Tralfamadorian tech is that its datedness has it pros, and being nigh impenetrable is one of them. Otherwise, he’d have been surprised Scott is saying so much over an unfamiliar line.

Though of course, Scott has chosen to be all business today, so Logan quickly shrugs on his jacket and holster, straightening up. “Bit of a downer, innit?” he grunts. “Haven’t seen as much as a feather from her lately.  Figured my trail had gone cold. She pick it up again?”

“In a word, yes. I haven’t been making it easy for her. Thing is, the Coalition must have reassigned her, because one second she goes off the radar, the next Victor Creed’s bounty is taken off the circuit.”

Logan looses a low whistle. “She take out Creed? ‘Spose she decided she had bigger fish to fry than me.”

“And better compensation,” Scott adds, somewhat matter-of-factly. “You’ll be pleased to hear this means you’ve moved up the list, I’m sure.”

Oh, _fuck_. Right. Like he needs _more_ mercenaries on his plate. No telling how much his own bounty went up in the meantime.

“Alright,” Logan mutters, pushing a hand back through his greasy hair. “Got any good news for me, or was that it?”

“Aside from The Phoenix potentially getting back on your trail?” Scott huffs into the receiver, pauses a moment. “You got a job offer, urgent request that came direct through the circuit. And they’re willing to pay half up front, to boot.”

“Any details yet?” Logan sighs. He’d planned to get a bit more shuteye before this cycle ends, but it’s likely that Rogue has been fixed up by now, early as it is. No skin off his back if he splits while no one’s looking.

“No,” Scott says then, “But get this,” and it’s perhaps _worrying_ , how fast the excitement fills Scott’s voice, “Our potential clients have coordinates just off of fucking _Terrestria._ I’ve sent them the relay for an outpost in the Boonies, so don’t worry—I wouldn’t send you in there blind. But when was the last time we worked a job right under Imperial noses, huh?”

“Too fucking long,” Logan grits through a wince as he stretches. To be sure, the last time earned him his own personal bounty hunter and too many sleepless nights to count, but ‘course, Scott’s never been one to _dwell_. “I’ll check it out, but don’t be surprised if I say no.”

“Patching your coordinates in to Rogue, now. Don’t wait up.” And with that, Scott ends the transmission.

Fucking _Scott_ , Logan thinks. He’ll probably say no to these new clients just for the hell of it. Also, because Scott is a dick who likes to leave Logan in the dark about his own goddamn life.

There’s no fucking way he’ll agree to this.


	3. Chapter 3

“Got a name, kid?”

“Hank,” the one with the glasses rasps, his eyes beginning to bug behind the thick frames. He’s already shoved the briefcase back under the table and into his lap, likely the only reason his knees aren’t bumping a steady rhythm into the underside on account of his jittery nerves.

“Hank, yeah? Ever want to be an actor?” Logan drawls as he filches a cigar and his last match from the inner-lining of his jacket. He hardly pauses, just long enough for Hank to open his mouth around a reply and the light to catch. “Well, now’s your big break.”

On the far side of the room, the Imperial patrol migrates toward the front of the bar counter. There’s four of them, each dressed to the gills in the gaudy maroon and purple assemblage that’s made the Empire a notorious eyesore.

As many times as Logan’s gotten close and personal with Coalition cannon fodder, it’s a different thing entirely to come face to face with one of the royal squadron’s tv-heads. At least with any other warm-blooded enemy Logan could get a damn read off of them. Bluebloods, he remembers, as the patrol pushes past the scrambling hostess and onto the main floor of the bar, sport the very unfortunate characteristic of a television-set in place of a head. Already, the flat grey screens that double for the bastards’ faces have begun swiveling on their stiff shoulders as they scan the crowd.

Logan rolls the cigar to the other side of his mouth and flicks his gaze back to his clients. Seems he’ll be playing this by ear after all.

“I’m guessing the welcome party’s for you,” Logan says, not quite as nastily as he’d intended. It kind of loses its bite once he locks eyes with the kid in the poncho again—Charles, didn’t he say? Logan hadn’t wanted to admit it earlier, but the kid is clearly made of sturdier stuff than he’d first thought. Charles meets Logan’s gaze with a set jaw and a determined glint in his eyes.

If this were any other time, any other clients, Logan would’ve buggered off while he still could. Interfering with Imperial business is a risk he sometimes has to take in his line of work, not something he’s made a damn _hobby_ of. But if there’s a single inkling of wisdom his old man managed to pass on to him after a lifetime of nerfherding in the outer quadrants, it was to avoid the worst case scenario, but never turn his back on it when it came to pass.

Plus, he already said he’d help them. And as a matter of course, Logan’s word, once he’s given it, is binding. More fool he.

“You can get us out of here, right?” The nervous one, Hank, asks on a bitten breath. “You said so yourself—“

“Hush now,” Charles says, low and soothing, and he rests a careful palm on Hank’s shoulder. His eyes dart back to Logan. “Mr. Howlett has already agreed. He knows what he’s doing. Am I wrong?”

Logan slouches into the booth cushion and pulls the cigar from his mouth, blowing out a steady stream of smoke. He hopes the move is nonchalant, as much as he’s fighting to keep his body from stiffening like a board. “No, yeah. I’m not backing out, if that’s what you mean.” He nods his head to where the patrol had made their entrance. “That’s our exit. Ain’t any other, so we’re gonna have to lowball our way out of this mess.”

That only fuels Hank’s apparent panic. “They know our faces. We’re the ones they’re looking for. It’s me and Charles, they’ll—“

Before Logan can cut the kid off, he’s surprised to find himself beat to the punch by Charles. The reassuring palm on Hank’s shoulder curls tighter, fingers digging in warningly. “Hank,” Charles shushes, stern. “Calm your mind. We’ll make it through this. Nothing will happen to you, I swear it.”

It baffles Logan, both the display of the odd dynamic between the two and the fact they know, for certain, that the patrol is here for them. Logan had already guessed that, of course. There’s no other explanation for an impromptu sweep from Imperial troops in a dive like this. But the confirmation of it is maybe not as reassuring as he’d hoped—a reminder that he’s about to take on wanted fugitives from the _Empire_. And yeah, if they’re talking actual goddamn Imperial patrols instead of the usual bargain-brand mercenary chumpmeat, Logan just might have swallowed more than he can chew.

Mercenaries he might’ve been able to handle, even survived with a scratch or three. But _this_...

Logan eyeballs the patrol. They’re about halfway across the room now and gaining fast. Every spacer sober enough to feel fear is showing it, either trembling or frozen in their seats, a few going so far as spilling the contents of their tankards down their clothes when the troops pass them by.

Yeah. He is so, so screwed.

Beside him, Logan hears the papery creak of the cheap cushion as the kid nearest to him, Charles, sidles close along the curve of the booth. The next thing he knows, something cold is splashing over his lap, soaking through the end of his cleanest shirt, and somehow Logan can just _tell_ it’s Charles’ sugary mess of a drink setting into the fabric. He growls, a curse sharp on the tip of his tongue when he turns to snap at the kid.

“Oh my,” Charles says, blue eyes wide and imploring, and Logan immediately pales. “Apologies,” he murmurs next. Logan would believe him if it weren’t for the way those lips of his crook, mischievous, and he leans too far into Logan’s space for comfort. “So clumsy when I’m tipsy. Might I help clean that up for you?”

Before Logan can protest how _really_ bad of an idea that it is, Charles is sliding off the bench and under the table, smirking up at Logan knowingly as he nudges Logan’s knees apart. “Hold still,” Charles mutters as he shoulders in close, the ball of napkins in one hand creeping forward while his other hand grasps at the hem of Logan’s soiled shirt.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to cotton on to what the kid’s doing, but it sure as hell isn’t easy on Logan’s sensibilities for those first thirty seconds. “Fuckin’ warn a guy,” he grumbles, raising a clenched fist and pressing it hard against his forehead to distract himself. _Think about Scott’s grandmother_ , his mind supplies, dogged. _Think about Scott’s_ Tralfamadorian _grandmother_.

“Your Hi— _Charles_ ,” Hank practically squeaks, though it’s Logan’s guess if it’s from the inappropriate sight his friend makes on his knees or the shortening distance between their booth and the patrol.

“Don’t just sit there,” Charles snaps, quick and to the point. “Hank, pull up the hood of your jacket and take off your glasses. I’m somewhat familiar with their facial recognition systems—spectacles, I believe, are a bit of a loophole. You should be fine.”

As soon as the kid’s complied, albeit in several stuttering movements, Logan reaches into the back slip of his jeans for the rag he’d used earlier to clean the station residue from Rogue’s engine. “Elbow grease,” Logan offers, indicating the rag just before he tosses it at Hank. “Rub some on your face and your own mother wouldn’t know you from Adam.”

Hank stares at it dumbly for just a second, then he swallows. “I—thanks.” He hesitates a moment more before dragging the rag across his forehead, cheeks, and chin in alternating stripes.

“Moment of truth, kid,” Logan murmurs, just as the tv-head at the front of the patrol approaches their section of the bar. It stops, first, a few feet away, its blank screen sweeping over the roughened faces of several off-the-clock pitstop workers in the adjacent booth, then it proceeds seamlessly to where Logan has bent himself over Charles’ slighter form.

Acting on instinct, Logan shoots a hand out and fists it in Charles’ hair, both covering part of the kid’s face and using the leverage to bring his head close to Logan’s thigh. Just before the tv-head’s screen lands on them, there’s a split-second of time where Charles’ upper lip pulls back in an aborted snarl, and he brings a knee forward on the grimy floor to dig into Logan’s shin.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Logan hisses; wheezes, more like. He quirks his chin sideways and glares at the Imperial trooper over his shoulder. “You wanna mind your own business, bub?”

As if surprised, the trooper’s head recoils backward and turns away. Its hand tightens briefly on the pummel of the rapier sheathed at its hip.

“As you were,” a robotic voice instructs, an afterthought. It hardly spares Hank a glance—the kid looks about ready to fold in on himself, hunched over a second tankard of ‘shine the waitress must have brought over some time ago, but after maybe ten seconds, less, the trooper’s attention flickers elsewhere and it moves on.

Both kids release their held breath.

“It worked,” Charles states, having the gall to sound surprised.

The look Logan tilts him is dubious at best. “You acted on a _hunch_?”

“Well,” Charles says. He dithers. “Yes.”

Across from them, Hank has gone white as a sheet. “Guys, I think I’m going to be sick.”

Logan resists the impulse to smack one or both of them. A hunch. On blueblood _modesty._ And somehow, it still feels like he’s the one who got caught with his metaphorical pants around his ankles. Which, in a sense, he really was.

It’s maybe ten minutes more before the patrol finishes their sweep and makes their exit. By that point, he doesn’t think he can take another minute of the must and stale alcohol smell stuck to the walls of the cramped booth. He gives it another four.

“Alright. Station bay,” Logan instructs before he can second-guess himself, and the reality of the situation sets in. Imperial troops— _fuck_. What has he gotten himself into. “ _Now._ ”

It’s a testament to his own will that he’s able to quiet the dread curling thick-as-oil in his lower gut.

 _Sheesh_ , Logan thinks, watching his clients scramble to obey with what he knows must be a grim frown, even for him. _I make it out of this one alive, I’m retiring._

Not like he thought this was going to be easy, or anything.

 

* * *

 

It’s still early enough in the morning cycle that the dockbay is empty when Logan steps out into it, his clients not far behind him. The ceiling is low, the lighting poor, but it beats leaving Rogue outside and susceptible to any flash rainstorms. This time of year they’re more common in this quadrant, so Logan isn’t in the mood to take any chances, even on an outpost that may not have seen rain in several months.

Rogue is small, but she’s a good runner. The best there is, if Logan had a say. He’d built her himself not long after he dropped out of Academy Prospects on one of the homeworld’s more remote bases. And rightfully—far as he knows, the Academy is nothing more than a front for Coalition drafting these days, a far cry from the peace-keeping division he’d grown up believing it to be.

There are a couple other ships docked, the largest of which Logan guesses to be some sort of trash collector, a big rig six times the size of his own ship. It’s for that reason that he parked Rogue just off the rig’s rear; Logan doesn’t do anything halfway, least of all the job he’s paid to do, and keeping a low profile is part of it.

Rogue comes into view when they swing around the rig’s tail end, stunning as she ever is. As they approach, he eyes the deterioration around her back thrusters, more rustic-looking beneath the faulty greylights, and briefly entertains the thought of a fresh coat of paint. Soon as he’s reached her, he sets a hand on a section of her side paneling, fingers spreading out to embrace the kiss of her cool metal surface, then he turns to regard the two kids he’s been towing since he left the bar.

Showing Rogue off is always a lot more pleasing than he’ll admit.

Charles gives her an unhurried once-over; he quirks a corner of his mouth, cheek dimpling in consideration, then sets his hands on his hips over the bulky poncho. “What a piece of junk,” he declares.

“This piece of junk,” Logan growls, smothering the sudden white-hot desire to strangle the kid, “is the only ship that can get you onto Wreath with all your limbs intact, so I suggest you take a good long moment to _appreciate_ her. You’re lucky she’s mine, let alone the fact I’m the one pilot far enough off his rocker to even consider takin’ the job.”

“Fair enough,” Charles concedes, though the way he flicks the hair from his eyes, unaffected, is aggravating enough on its own. “Now if you will, Mr. Howlett, I’d rather much be on our way.”

Like he said, _privileged_.

Logan pulls back the cuff of his jacket and taps at the comm receiver he likes to keep handy at his wrist.  He’d shelled out a good amount of cash to get Rogue a frequency off the grid, but he’s also since programmed his personal comm to pick it up with ease. The hatch responds instantly, lowering in a slow reveal of familiar, pale blue light.

“Come on then,” Logan grunts, jerking his head toward the off-ramp. “I’d ‘preciate it if you didn’t touch anything, though I’ll wait on the House Rules spiel ‘til we break orbit if it’s all the same to you.”

He doesn’t wait for a reply, already turning on his heel to climb up the hatch. Once inside, he ambles over to the powerbox to the side of the entryway and flips the switches for the cockpit and helm.

“Your Hi—Charles, _please_ ,” he hears Hank plead, and Logan has to bite the next words that line up on his tongue. The two of them are still making their way up the ramp, too slow if anyone asked him, and it appears to be a battle of wills: for every careful step forward Charles takes, Hank rushes forward with his hands extended to catch him, as if the incline is difficult on Charles’ delicate _Terrestrian_ sense of balance and he’s in any real danger of falling.

Logan huffs a sigh. He sure could pick ‘em.

“Any day now,” he adds for good measure, shedding his jacket and flinging it toward a corner of the cargo hold. He waits by the hatch release until his clients finally decide to board his ship _this century_ , only triggering the closing mechanism once both sets of boots have settled on the perforated grating of Rogue’s upper deck.

There’s a curious bit of pink high in Charles’ cheeks now, his breathing a touch reedy. Hank has paled again, his eyes glued to his companion like Charles will keel over the second he isn’t looking.

Not that Charles actually does. Instead, he lifts his chin and meets Logan’s cool gaze, a challenge in the gesture that Logan is all too familiar with.

Logan nearly gives into the urge to roll his eyes, this time.

“Right, so, cockpit is this way. If you’ll follow me.”

The cockpit is the one part of the ship built for comfort, and Logan knows it can fit five people, easy, with a little room to spare. The corridor that curves off from the cargo hold opens up into the flight deck, part-lounge with a table and set of chairs off to one side, a dingy futon on the other, and the pilot’s chair off-center before the sprawling control hub at the opposite end. First thing Logan does when he sits down in front of it is hit the release for the window shutter. It opens at a crawl, the motor humming as it gives way from the spherical shape of the glass.

“Take-off hasn’t been as smooth as I’d like, lately,” Logan admits, twisting his head to watch his clients enter the room. “I suggest you find a seat and hold onto it.”

He wants to think it’s progress when neither sees fit to comment. Hank ushers Charles over to the table, where they plop down in the chairs and, admirably, grip their hands tight around the table’s edge.

It’s rough—just as Logan said it would be, but that doesn’t make it any easier. He switches his comm to the frequency for the nearest exit in the dockbay’s roof, engaging an unlock sequence it recognizes, and he manages the lift-off and ascent without a hitch. It’s breaking orbit that has slowly become more trouble for Rogue to handle, though she’s reached a certain threshold where Logan thinks she can’t get any worse, the only important thing being she’s serviceable at it.

By the time Rogue’s hit the black and the view beyond the window is nothing but an endless expanse of stars, his palms are sweaty and he’s fighting a migraine. His clients, when he spares them a backward glance, are looking a little green.

Once the lift thrusters settle down, the cockpit grows quiet, a nice reprieve from the stress Logan has put up with since he’d gone station-side back on Tarsac-483 not two cycles ago. The thought reminds him that he has to check in with Scott at some point before the current cycle is out, though for now he puts a pin in it, leaning forward to fiddle with the navigation table. He drags a finger across the murky interface, adjusts the star map until the longitude and latitude line up the way he wants within the compact screen.

“Those aren’t the coordinates for Wreath.”

Logan props an elbow on the console and side-eyes Charles heavily where the kid is hanging over the shoulder of the chair.

“No, they’re not,” is all Logan says in reply. He sets his attention back on the navigation table, flicks at the jumble of numbers and code that would likely make little to no sense to the pilots of modern systems; not that Logan had any desire for mechanics developed on Terrestrian soil, but he’s seen the secondhand schematics uploaded over the circuit, and ask anybody, even someone like _Scott_ will say the designs are too simple to be practical.

He feels the way Charles’ weight shifts against the seat. “Explain.”

“I don’t know if I made it clear enough back there,” Logan drawls, “so I’ll say it again: what we’re talkin’ here, it’s one step up from a suicide mission.”

“So you’ve said, Mr. Howlett.” It just about miffs him, how testy Charles can get in a matter of seconds. The way he says Logan’s last name carries as much force as outright telling him to _get on with it, already_.

Logan sighs. “This right here?” He indicates a blip on the map that’s vaguely pink in color. “Planet known to most as Cleave—heard of it?”

Although Logan can’t see him, Charles has leaned closer, a hand coming forward to frame one corner of the nav table. It tenses at the words.

“I’ve... yes. It was one of the first battle worlds, correct? Landfall Coalition drove scattered resistance contingents cross-planet. The indigenous population—“

“Was wiped out, yeah,” Logan finishes. There was something odd about the kid’s tone when he said it, but Logan doesn’t press the issue. “They don’t get many visitors nowadays. Any spacer’ll tell you all that’s left s’graves and wasteland. That is, ‘less you know what you’re lookin’ at.”

“Are you saying—the resistance?” He really shouldn’t sound so skeptical, Logan thinks grudgingly. Give a smuggler some credit; Logan knows his stuff.

“I’m saying I have an old friend who’s upwards in the resistance’s chain of command. Last I checked in with her was just over four months ago. They were rebuilding, or hiding; maybe both. She never did say. All I know is, if anyone can get us onto Wreath, it’s Mystique.”

Charles chooses that moment to come around the back of the chair. Before Logan can protest it, he pushes past Logan’s arm and perches on the edge of the console, practically demanding Logan’s full attention, and loudly. “And she’s still with the resistance? You’re sure she can help us?”

“She workin' for The Narrative, you mean? Yeah.” Logan rubs at his neck, swallows. He’ll do anything to avoid Charles’ eyes, which are blue as hell beneath the pale light filtering through the flight deck’s dusty bulbs. He’ll do anything to get some damn _whisky_ around here. “Mystique married a moonie, after all. Got a kid, too. We can trust her.”

“We don’t have time for mistakes, you realize,” and there’s no mistaking the gravity of the statement, not now. “We have few enough resources at our disposal, and frankly, time is not one of them.”

“Kid, look, I _realize_ what you’re sayin’, but—“

“ _I_ realize, Mr. Howlett,” Charles says icily, “that age is subjective, but I assure you, I am not a child. On my home planet, I’m considered fully matured at twenty-three revolutions around the nearest dwarf star. I would greatly appreciate if you would allot me the respect I deserve.”

Logan reclines in the pilot’s chair and debates whether or not now is a good time to forage the cargo hold for one of his cigar stashes. “Whatever you say, _princess_ ,” he sneers, teeth bared for a brief moment.

“You—“ Fury flashes in Charles’ eyes, but dissipates just as quickly. He takes a deep breath, fists a hand in the thick hem of his damned poncho.  Then, slowly, he says, “Just consider, Mr. Howlett, how many lives are depending on us. We cannot fail. Not in this.”

“Wow, bub.” For once, Logan concedes defeat. He lifts his palms in surrender. “Never said I ain’t takin’ this seriously.”

“You didn’t have to,” Charles fires back, already rising from his seat. “It was implied. Now, if you will, please tell me this ship has a decent lavatory.”

Logan bites back any amount of half-assed remarks and politely informs the man where the damn bathroom is.

Not a second after his royal highness exits the cockpit, he turns in his chair to pin the nervous one, Hank, with a mildly annoyed frown. “You know what that was about?”

“Oh!” Hank startles, glancing up from the stack of papers he’d spread out on the table. The briefcase lies just beside them, along with a small knapsack his clients must be sharing between them. “Uh, he has—a small bladder! He has to go. A lot. It’s really nothing to worry about, not—“

“Hank.” Logan rubs a hand down his face; if only he could soothe away the migraine that’s coming back in full force. Hank, it would seem, only has one setting, and Logan has never been the kiddie-gloves type. “I meant the attitude. Standoffish, argumentative—ring any bells?”

“Oh,” Hank says intelligently. He pauses, probably mentally rehearsing his own word-vomit, because then he’s blushing bright red. Flustered, Hank hurries to correct: “Charles is just... worried, is all. The last twenty-four hours have been hard on the both of us.”

With their course already set for Cleave, it’s the work of a few more switches to engage autopilot and jump to warp speed. The rate Rogue is going, Cleave is just six hours out. Logan hums in reply as he finishes up, but once everything’s set, the only important thing left for him to do is wait the rest of the flight out. With that in mind, he rises from the pilot’s chair and makes his way over to Hank.

“So these blueprints of yours—mind tellin’ me how you got ‘em?” He takes the chair Charles had vacated, for once forgoing a lounge to lean forward over the papers, his eyes quick, assessing.

Hank only looks somewhat putoff by the change in subject, though it could also be Logan’s sudden proximity that’s doing that. Not that Logan is actively trying to intimidate him; it’s just that Hank is the type of skin and bones a stiff wind could knock over.

“I work in the royal labs,” Hank says.

Logan’s eyebrows shoot up. “That so.” A low whistle. “What’s that make you? The royal lab boy?”

“Not at all!” Hank replies, sounding practically scandalized by the idea. He offers Logan an outstretched hand. “Dr. Hank McCoy, actually. Pleased to make your, ah, acquaintance.”

Logan stares at it for a long moment before finally taking it, gripping Hank’s hand hard. “Sure thing. Now, what is it exactly we’re talkin’ here?”

He waits for Hank to pull a single page from the mess and hand it over to him. “This. They’re plans—schematics. Something that’s been developing under Coalition supervision for several months now. I do most of my work in biotics; genetics is my specialty. So you can understand why I didn’t know anything about them until two days ago. It was an accident, really, that I saw them at all. And, well, here we are.”

“You and Charles,” Logan corrects. “Charles work in this lab of yours, too?”

“Would if he could, believe me,” Hank says then, and there’s fondness in his voice and the lines of his face. “But no. Charles, he, um... works in the gardens,” Hank hastens to add. “The royal gardens are his favorite place to, ah, be.”

There’s something else to it, Logan can’t help but think. Hank is acting nervous again. He narrows his eyes, about to ask another pointed question when he finally brings the sheef of paper in close and really gets an eyeful.

“This is the one I saw back in the bar,” Logan croaks, and huh, that happened fast. Maybe it’s just reality come knocking, after he went and let himself forget. “Looks like a weapon. A big one.”

“The key being nuclear power,” Hank says, voice grim. “De-atomizers on an enormous scale. And that’s not even the worst part, it’s—“

“A moon. Landfall is building a weaponized _moon_.”


	4. Moira

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand here we have Moira's POV to change things up a bit! Also, Erik finally makes his appearance! I probably would have had this chapter done sooner but the sudden urge to rewrite the last chapters of all my wips was too strong - I'll definitely be back later to fix this one up a bit more anyway /shrug
> 
> I was totally replaying Mass Effect the other day and realized how much I had inadvertently been drawing from it for some of the world-building. That, of course, is another au entirely. But now I can be pleased with the image of Renegade Shepard!Erik telling the council to kiss his ass.
> 
> Hopefully getting back into the action next chapter will do me some good :^]

There’s something to be said for clearance protocols on Terrestria. If descents into Landfallian airspace are a hassle loaded with overdrawn debriefings and fussy reporters, entering port at the citadel is downright _dreadful_. Landfall, Moira can handle, given the state of her mood post-mission and sufficient warning at least two cycles prior to docking—she’s become a better hand at navigating the rapid-fire media onslaught and the ever-present dread of misspeaking, of terse holo-calls from Admiral Frost not a half hour after said interview has projected instantly to four million users direct over the Open Circuit. Though really, that only happened the once.

Her discomfort with the citadel stems mainly from the stiffness of the personnel—if a member of the Imperial guard were ever to be described as _friendly_ , she’d be hard-pressed to question that particular spacer’s sanity. Although that is only part and parcel to the lunacy that is the royal embassy, all the uptight diplomats and bored senators that prefer to think Moira daft, should she ever attempt conversation.

And to think, her choices in planetside dalliances boil down to avid media commercialism or politics.

The pull into the citadel’s main port is a crawl on the best occasions. As the _Excalibur_ ’s bulky haul cuts through the air-lane into the mainstay of Terrestria’s capital city, passing through neat rows of tall, spiraling buildings that only grow narrower and sharper as they travel inward, for once it seems that traffic is agreeable—in retrospect, constructing only a single major airway into the city proper might have been a mistake on the part of the robot people’s engineers.

The nearby lanes are empty save for a few freight carriers hovering by on their rounds, and higher aboveground, a shuttle rushes down its tracks in the opposite direction—as always, eye-catching in its practical, seamless features and the glassy white coloring characteristic of the citadel’s towering spires.

“This is weird, right?” someone asks to Moira’s right. She directs her gaze away from the wide window of the _Excalibur_ ’s helm to level her First Lieutenant with a steady look.

Lieutenant Muñoz stands at parade rest by her side, though the protocol of his stance is contradicted by the faint half-smile tugging at his lips. “Our airspace is awfully empty,” he continues, and he indicates the helm’s window with a tilt of his head. “Think something’s up?”

She can’t quite tell if he means it to be a joke—there’s the hint of humor beneath his words she normally wouldn’t permit during on-duty cycles. But at present, they are the only members of the crew that haven’t yet taken the trip down to ground deck for docking, aside from one of the co-pilots, who will remain stationed at the primary navigation table until the _Excalibur_ is safely in port.

For now, Moira allows it. She purses her lips and shakes her head before replying, “I would hope not, lieutenant.”

She can’t say for certain what feels off; over her seven years in the Coalition, and the last three as Commodore of the Second Fleet, she’s been called to the citadel only a handful of times. This port marks her fourth, though it should also be said that Admiral Frost has sent her to the citadel twice in as many months. While not a one of her crew is eager to say it aloud, it’s all too obvious why Moira is reporting to the Imperial Council in the admiral’s stead, and it’s not so much due to changes in The Narrative’s activities in the outer sectors as it is Admiral Frost wanting nothing to do with the politicking herself.

Turning her attention back to the window, Moira breaks from the stoic expression she often finds difficult to drop during duty hours and smiles warmly. She can’t say she dislikes the rare opportunity to speak with her lieutenant like they used to, back when they were both ensigns fresh from the Academy and had taken an immediate liking to one another’s work ethic—though that’s probably one of a number of reasons they do better together than they ever have with others in the past.  

She lets the same idle lightness turn her tone as her eyes follow the movement of the red holograms that demarcate the barriers along the airway, “Or do you so fervently wish to enjoy His Royal Highness’ council when he is in one of his moods?”

It isn’t often they can be so open, nor bold, and her reply startles a snort from him. “Sure,” Armando says, easy, as the glass spires of the citadel peak above the distant skyline of the city. “Moods. If a hurricane can be called a small gust of wind.”

The robot people are as fond of geometric shapes in their architecture as they are in the utilitarian, frictionless designs of their vehicles—it’s something to do with the mental workings of organo-mechanical lifeforms, most likely, purely aesthetics to their robotic tastes. The embassy hall is the largest part of the citadel, a great spherical dome that rises between a grid of spires with a series of spiraling walkways connecting them, and it looks more like a palace than anything else. Such an assessment isn’t too far off the mark, considering the citadel is the Imperial seat on Terrestria, and for that matter, the residential area of the embassy is home to the robot prince and his council.

As the four ships in her squadron approach central dock, she’s surprised to see less activity along the platform below. Large crowds of spacers and Terrestrians are being held up at terminals by Imperial troops; it’s their uniforms she notices first, the awful colors of the Imperial seal she’d recognize instantly anywhere in the six neighboring galaxies. If something has happened, well—it begs the question of what could possibly require the stoppage of all outgoing transport on the citadel’s most important dock.

“I guess we have our answer then,” Armando remarks, and he sounds about as wary as Moira feels.

Her squadron are currently the only incoming vessels, and she can’t help the itching sense of unease that follows on the heels of their approach. They’re both familiar enough with the faint jolt of the _Excalibur_ breaching dock that they hold steady against it, and release a collective exhale afterward.

“Not quite,” Moira says. “Knowing the Empire, they’ll hold back that information as long as possible. We proceed as usual, lieutenant, and perhaps we’ll be enlightened after debrief.”

Armando straightens. “Of course, commodore.”

She spares the platform one last glance. The worry doesn’t lessen, but there’s no time for lingering, and at once, they prepare to disembark.

 

* * *

 

Due to the nature of Terrestria’s inhospitable desert landscape, the robot people built their civilization hundreds if not thousands of feet above the ground, a planet of sprawling, interconnected cities in the clouds. The capital city, Genosha, is home to the citadel, but is visually no different than any other sector of the Empire’s homeworld.

At least it’s easy on the eyes, Moira can’t help but think as she and her lieutenant descend the gangplank to the lower platform. Compared to Landfall, Terrestria is rather plain and minimalist. The grand arches of central dock are pearl-white, unassuming for all their architectural pomp, and the only spots of color are the informational holograms that flit by on anti-gravitational buoys.

She’s had to get used to _that,_ as well: the chipper voice and face of a robot female that reads off boarding protocols and tends to dog Moira’s steps whenever she traverses the platform. The holofile is on a loop, and it has since become a bit of a mission in itself—trying her utmost to make it to the Coalition’s ambassadorial office before the file has the chance to playback. Moira has had dealings with a limitless host of intergalactic species in her time with the Coalition, but like many others, she could never quite place her discomfiture when it comes to the robot people’s television faces.

Trips into the citadel are technically shore leave for the crew, despite the lack of a single bar on the entirety of the grounds—along with certain _other_ disagreeable amenities. They splinter off to go about their own business the moment the _Excaliber_ has been fully evac-ed, leaving Moira with only Lieutenant Muñoz to accompany her into the embassy hall.

They wait for an expressionless dock controller to wave them through security at their port, then Moira sets off for the opposite end of the platform. Unlike every time previous, the path is clear. Spacers of all ilks and shapes have been cornered off at each port terminal, some angry, furious even, while others mutter confusedly amongst themselves. It doesn’t appear that anyone is being allowed onto the dock, let alone _off_ of it. The double-arched entrance into the main offices of the embassy hall is blocked off by a line of brightly lit holoscreens and Imperial troops.

Moira halts in her steps and throws a hand back to stop Armando, as well. She turns her head toward the closest terminal, where two Protheans are bickering softly by the sectioning barricade.

“Picking anything up, lieutenant?” Moira asks, though it isn’t exactly a question.

Armando’s eyebrows shoot up, and he tilts his head at her, more than a bit curious. It isn’t often that his commanding officer requests he utilize his species’ superior senses to skirt Imperial discretion. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, then, “There’s a lot of talk. Nothing concrete, I don’t think. But it’s got to do with the prince.” His eyes flicker over her shoulder, toward the troops by the entrance, then back again. “Still worrying about those moods of his?”

“I like to be prepared,” is all Moira says in reply.

In truth, she has no love lost on the Empire. Landfall bolsters Imperial control by way of media propaganda, spoonfed to every Landfallian and Terrestrian since infancy, but Moira has never considered herself one of them no matter her place of birth. Her parents raised her on a Coalition military base in the Skotlas Quadrant, and in the ensuing years there, she was far enough removed from the influence of Landfall’s modern society to become privy to certain facts.

For one, the Empire would not be nearly as powerful as they are now if Landfall hadn’t supported its reign over the last generations, since the end of the Geth War several decades ago spelt the beginning of the Robot Empire’s supremacy over the known sectors of space. It’s her opinion that their recent military outsourcing to the Coalition is much more underhanded than most Landfallians and Terrestrians have been led to believe.

And maybe to any spacer out in the black, that line of thinking would be grounds for termination—a _separatist’s_ line of thinking.

The Empire’s support in the war on Wreath was inevitable, but that doesn’t make her any more trusting of the bluebloods, or their demanding, despotic _prince_.

When they finally make it to the embassy’s entrance, Moira squares her shoulders and steps up to the first Imperial troop in reach. It disconcerts her, as always, how little she can gather from the grey screen of its face.

“Commodore Moira MacTaggert of Landfall Coalition’s Second Fleet,” she introduces herself, keeping her voice sharp, though her words garner no visible reaction. “I’ve been sent by Admiral Frost to attend His Royal Highness’ council in her stead. If you would be so kind as to let myself and my lieutenant through, we’ll be late enough as it is.”

Stiffly, the robot raises an arm in salute. “Commodore MacTaggert,” and there’s a brief flash of her Coalition-sanctioned headshot on its screen before it goes grey again. “Your identification is verified. At this time, we ask all council attendees to report to the mess hall for questioning. His Royal Highness has requested that visitors remain at central dock until further notice. Permission to wander is denied at this juncture.”

“Questioning,” Moira repeats flatly, eyes narrowing. “To what end?”

“At your discretion, commodore,” the guard continues, cool, “It is in your best interest that you follow me to the mess.”

Distantly, she notes the strain in her jaw, the hot pulse in her clenched hands. “I will _not_ be dictated—”

“Commodore,” Armando says steadily, and he gives her a reassuring squeeze where he’s placed a hand on her shoulder.  “I suspect Admiral Frost will be unhappy enough with the present situation for the two of you, if not more. The quicker we ring her up over the circuit, the better.”

It’s hard to recover after her own outburst, but for once, she can be thankful that the robot people aren’t quick to take offense. “Right you are,” Moira agrees as she settles back on her heels. Most officers in the Coalition learn the hard way that grinding underlings into the dirt is Admiral Frost’s specialty. And _this_ Frost will not be happy about.

Moira turns her attention back to the Imperial troop. “Lead the way.”

The inner halls of the embassy are no less impressive than the docking platform. High, curved archways open up the ceiling, allowing natural light from Terrestria’s two suns to set the white walls faintly aglow. And then there are the narrow banners that hang from the portraits of various long-dead kings and queens in the royal line. It’s the colors of the Empire on display once again; the maroon tapestries are meant to complement the deep purple of the carpet, though it’s Moira’s guess if the combination is pleasing to anyone besides the prince.

The hallways are also a right labyrinth, though they’re almost peaceful with no one else running about. Considering the hustle and bustle of diplomats and harried politicians her previous visit, she should welcome the change, but there’s a certain tension underlying the air of the citadel, nonetheless.

The guard leading them to the mess hall walks like any perfect Imperial soldier: robotic and with purpose. Moira has just begun to suspect it of taking them round in circles when they break into an intersection of bisecting hallways. Their personal guard makes a turn for the left, but before Moira can follow, Armando stops in the middle of the space—a small common area, if Moira had to guess. Another ridiculous fixture sits at its center, a marble fountain with a rather exaggerated statue of the late King Robot III atop a small dais, frozen in victorious pose, his sword-arm raised in triumph.  

“Is that—Admiral _Frost_?” Armando blurts in surprise.

Sure enough, the woman herself is walking towards them from down the opposite hall aways, and gaining fast. She joins them by the fountain in a flourish of white and platinum blond.

“MacTaggert,” Frost greets, and it’s not the first time that Moira has to wonder how the admiral convinced Coalition heads to grant her an immaculately-pressed white uniform; the standard issue among officers is a pale, unassuming blue. “Nice of you to finally join us,” she comments distantly, as her gaze sweeps over both Moira and Armando before flitting to the Imperial troop.

“Admiral,” the troop salutes.

Frost tilts her head delicately and flattens her mouth in a stern line. “Soldier. You’re dismissed. I can handle my own officers from here.”

It’s no surprise that Frost is the only member of the Coalition with any sway over Imperial dealings, much as His Royal Highness would have it otherwise; she knows how to command a room and beg no questions. Case in point: the troop only hesitates the briefest of moments before saluting her once again, and stiffly marching off.

Moira is still reeling from the surprise of Frost’s presence—though she knows, in practice, that the admiral has attended citadel functions in the past, they’ve never been planetside on Terrestria at the same time. It’s been several months on top of that since they met face to face and not over a two-way holoscreen.

“Admiral Frost,” Moira starts, composing herself fast enough to shoot off a quick salute. She takes the time to resituate on her feet and attempt to calm her whirlwind of thoughts. “It was my understanding that I was to be taking your place at the council—has something happened?”

“Indeed, commodore,” Frost replies instantly. She turns on her heel and indicates the hall she came from with a flick of her hand. “Walk with me. I’ll fill you in on the way.”

Moira gives Frost a dubious look, though a sideways glance at Armando tells her he’s more curious than anything else. It’s says something about their partnership that he looks to Moira first, waiting on her curt nod before falling in step behind the admiral.

Moving to match Frost’s brisk stride, Moira deliberates her next words; first and foremost, she’d like to know just _what the hell_ is going on. “What is this all about, admiral?”

Frost dithers, a bit, as they pass a section of the hallway that faces out into the city proper, the outside wall falling away to massive, floor-to-ceiling windows. The hall is quiet save the steady click of the admiral’s heels, and Moira counts her breaths.

Sighing, Frost comes out with it: “You might say there’s been a breach in security.”

That’s... not too far off Moira’s earlier speculation. Still, she can feel her eyebrows ticking up with no small amount of disbelief. But Frost’s heavy steps have become more purposeful, wherever she’s leading them, and the admiral doesn’t spare her a passing glance.

“A _breach_? You’re kidding me—since when has the Empire shown itself to be anything but impenetrable?” Any decorum Moira may have held together in the admiral’s presence falls away right quick, after that. Because—hell. It’s no wonder the entire thing is being kept so tight-lipped. The thought of the public’s response alone is enough to give her a headache.

“I only received word of it earlier this cycle,” Frost continues, undeterred, “His Highness was not to be dismissed: I was to make the first warp over or risk political fallout.”

“I don’t follow. Are you now considered privy to the Empire’s business?” Moira snaps.

“You saw the docks for yourself, MacTaggert. The embassy offices have been flooded with calls since the shutdown. Some of these traders port at Landfallian bases; after that point, it was no longer an Imperial matter.”

“I see. And His Highness?”

“Incorrigible,” Frost fires back, and it’s only now that Moira realizes the admiral is _annoyed_ , perhaps even frustrated. “He’s convinced the attack was planned, and won’t hear anything otherwise.”

They reach a turn into another hallway, wider now and marked by the closed doors of several conference rooms, something Moira recalls the ambassadors finding frequent use for in their lesser affairs. The space isn’t as grand as others spread throughout the embassy, the light more diffuse, and it’s for that reason that, when Admiral Frost heads for the first room on the left, Moira really does not expect to see the _prince,_ of all people, waiting for them behind the pressurized door.

Shit. She always forgets the protocol for this sort of thing. Her hand twitches in an aborted salute before she settles on a stilted, awkward half-bow. Beside her, the air stirs as Armando does something akin to the same.

The room is long and narrow, and an enormous table fills most of the space; at the far end, at its head, the prince rises from his seat with two guards flanking him. Only belatedly, Moira notices the two others posted on either side of the door.

“Your Highness,” Frost greets, the sort of faux-polite ensigns must learn quick if they want to curb the admiral’s anger—and the thought of it here, now, has Moira holding back a snort. “It appears my officers were being unnecessarily escorted to the mess.”

They’re much closer and in far tighter quarters than Moira has ever been in relation to the prince. Normally the council has her seated at the furthest end of the assembly hall, the robot prince a distant fixture in the buzzing room. Now, he is an ominous presence in the confined space.

The greylights are set low; most of the room’s illumination filters through the window on the far wall. Though there’s also the sections of interface that have lit up across the table’s surface, brightest in the place before the prince’s seat, where he likely accessed it himself while he waited.

Frost takes the length of the table in several long strides, sidling up alongside the nearest of the prince’s guard with a displeased curl to her mouth, and she delicately crosses her arms.

“Precautions, Frost,” the prince replies, flat. He levels her with his cool regard, everything about the way he holds himself in his fitted, formal regal uninviting, impatient. “Your officers made it inside the embassy, did they not?”

Moira and Armando have followed close at Frost’s heels. Before Moira can think better of it, she blurts, “What is the meaning of this?” And though she directs it at Frost, the prince’s cold gaze flickers over to her as she joins them.

Frost taps at her elbow with the fingers of one hand. “You’re here at His Highness’ request, commodore. Now, this is very important—you came from the outer quadrants, did you not? What can you tell us about any suspicious activity you encountered on the travel here?”

The prince doesn’t say anything, but his jaw is tight, anger in the hard lines of his face.  Moira has always found it puzzling how the blueblood’s lineages work; the royal line, she remembers reading somewhere, are the only members of the robot species that look, fundamentally, entirely human. Though she’d also heard the rumors: namely, that the prince is as handsome as he is impulsive.

“Nothing,” she reports, turning back to Frost. “We had no trouble and didn’t hear anything different over the circuit.”

“You’re certain?” Frost asks, firmer.

“Enough of this!” the prince interrupts before Moira can so much as open her mouth. “What the admiral has so kindly refrained from asking is if you or your crew saw the ship of a known convict fleeing toward the outer sectors.”

For a brief moment, Moira is incapable of forming a reply. “We had no such sightings,” she says, curt and to the point. She looks back to the prince, confused and, on some level, _irritated_ by his blatant disregard of basic courtesy. “Is there something I’m missing, Your Highness?”

Despite the elegant contours of the prince’s face, when he frowns, it cuts a severe line across his features. The tension in the air is palpable, and it’s no more obvious to her than it is to Armando that Frost is out of her jurisdiction here—in any other situation that would be a sight to see, but not when the prince looks like he would enjoy nothing more than to slowly eviscerate them all. Drawn and quartered, at the very least.

“Commodore,” the prince begins flatly, his eyes steely, and when he steps forward into Moira’s space, his thick cape sways forward with the gait of his step, “there is evidence linking a smuggler by the name of Logan Howlett with the disappearance of the royal consort from his rooms early this morning. If you have any information regarding this man, you’d do well to inform me now. Otherwise, I believe your presence at the citadel is no longer warranted.”

Frost, for her part, makes an attempt to placate him: “Erik, Highness, I don’t think—”

“ _Emma_ ,” the prince says then, snide, parting his guard with a swift gesture of his fingers so he can pace back toward her. “Not one of your officers has thus far proved any _smattering_ of use in finding my husband. Now, either you bring me someone who can, or you can take your idle words and get _out_.”

Moira swallows tightly. Clearly the prince is furious, and on top of his usual demeanor, well—they’re not getting anywhere anytime soon. It’s what he said though that’s distracting her. With the prince rounding on Frost, Moira has the chance to breathe again, to calculate.

For one, the idea is _preposterous_. Not with the immensity of the citadel’s security grid or the presence of so many damn guards—today is an outlier, but normally she would expect two of those things posted in every hallway. That’s not to mention the impossibility of a criminal making it through atmospheric clearance, not without the rock-solid papers for it. Although the bare bones of the idea might prove a stroke of genius, if successful—kidnap the prince’s consort from under the Empire’s nose? Shit. The ransom alone would be the furthest thing from kind this side of known space.

If— _when_ —this gets out, Landfallian media outlets will become a circus across the circuit. The news will be intergalactic before the cycle is out.

Admiral Frost’s expression sours. Stiffly, she remarks, “The Second Fleet was the only squadron on patrol anywhere near this sector of space. If the commodore has nothing to report, there is nothing else to be said for it.”

Moira folds her arms behind her back and tilts her head at the prince, considering. “You plan to keep this under Imperial discretion,” she states, already certain of the fact, and when the Prince pivots back on his heel to face her again, she asks, “How certain are you of Howlett’s whereabouts?”

Dogged, the prince replies, “Exact. Less than an hour ago, I received word from an underground channel that a cruiser matching his ship’s description was spotted leaving a derelict sector not far from Terrestria’s offworld station. The location was too calculated. He didn’t want to be found.”

“How much ground has been covered in the interim?”

For the briefest moment, the prince pulls back, and it’s oddly gratifying to see the minute change in his countenance as he appears to reassess her. “Not nearly as much as I’d like,” he replies, gruff, “Six patrols as soon as I found out, four more deployed since.” He gestures to the configuration lit up across the tabletop—from this angle, it’s less a bright jumble and much more organized, a portion of star map marked in places, from the looks of it, with the current positions of the Imperial patrols. And alongside it, a series of updating status reports.

“They’ve searched every outpost in this quadrant and are already halfway through the neighboring two. It’s _galling_ , to say the least. How difficult can it be,” and here the prince inhales sharply, pacing toward the table to swipe at the report files, “to find some half-witted, scruffy-looking nerfherder _buffoon_?”

The fingers he used to tap against the tabletop curl into a fist, one he smashes down against the interface—a loud, distinct _clang_ that serves as a reminder that the prince is anything but human.

Silence stretches after that, long enough that Moira thinks anything she might say to fill it would only be disastrous. She’s never met the royal consort herself, and there is startlingly little said or discussed about him—granted, that may be wholly the prince’s doing. But she knows enough from experience to balk at the idea of a separatist interspacer with no morals getting his hands on some sheltered, Terrestrian aristocrat.

Out of everyone in the room, it’s _Armando’s_ voice that rises above the quiet. “The _Excalibur_ is the fastest ship in the Nine Fleets. I don’t see any reason why the commodore can’t get the job done. You need to find your husband? Gives us coordinates and a direction. We’ll bring him home.”

The prince straightens from his slouch over the table and sweeps around to consider her lieutenant with a narrow-eyed look. There’s a certain amount of dislike there, a grudging distaste Moira knows he holds for most Coalition officers aside from Admiral Frost on the best occasions.

“I’ll hold you to that, officer,” the prince replies, infuriatingly slow, the corners of his mouth tugging backward in the faint impression of a snarl. He cuts his gaze to the nearest of his guard. “Escort Commodore MacTaggert and the Lieutenant back to their ship and ensure their immediate departure. Any information they desire may be forwarded to the _Excalibur_ ’s data logs.”

He makes a swift, practiced gesture with one hand, and the guard moves instantly into action. Moira doesn’t protest when two Imperial troops begin ushering them back toward the door; she worries what would happen if she made any such attempt. Throwing one last glance Frost’s way, the admiral is watching the prince with a poorly hidden grimace behind clenched teeth. The fact that even _Frost_ can do nothing to argue the prince’s orders speaks for itself, really.

“Oh, and commodore?” the prince says, just as the door slides open and Moira steps out into the hall. “Return my husband to me hurt, in any capacity, and it will be your head.”

It’s a struggle to keep her shoulders relaxed, at that. Even more of one to loosen her jaw enough to offer him a rigid nod over her shoulder. Armando brushes past her, a wordless form of reassurance that he often employs, and she will likely never tire of.

Just before the door closes behind them, they hear Frost begin to speak again, though the words are low and indistinct. She is cut off, anyway, not a moment later, when the conference room is suddenly filled with the inflectionless voice of the citadel’s system-wide A.I.

_“Incoming transmission from sector Zeta-8. Identification: The Phoenix. ”_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired and (finally!) brought to you by, of all things: 1) a Weezer concert and 2) unreasonably priced alcohol. We all have our regrets, yes?

The universe tends to forget what it’s like in those intermittent, pocket-sized spans of time between constant decades of all-out warfare. Peace time, that is. Not that Logan has much experience with the concept; his own mother brought him into this shit-hole cluster of galaxies, pre-mature, on a Geth-occupied freighter far out in deep space.

At the time, there were probably only two things on her mind: keepin’ real quiet-like throughout the entire labor, lest one of the Geth on guard outside the prison-hold hear her, and the sheer scope of her _anger_ at the robot people, who hadn’t spared an ounce of sympathy for the third-class mining and herding families of the outer quadrants that got caught up in their pissing contest with the only other organo-mechanical species known to civil space.

In those days it was all about King Robot III’s mission to prove to all them simple ‘ole spacers, like Logan—like every _other_ second-rate organic lifeform out there—that the robot people were the big shot elite. The Geth hadn’t been on-scene for quite as long as the Robot Kingdom had been at the time, maybe a century or two before their communication technology hit an upswing, but in all due respect, it was getting to be that time that the robot people offended _another_ newly minted Intelligent and Advanced Race and re-instated intergalactic war. Or so the course of history would prove.

The Geth never took prisoners if they could help it, so it’s a damn miracle Logan made it as far as his first breath of synthetic oxygen amidst the bright purple stink of sedite coal dust and miner’s sweat that filled the crowded hold. That didn’t get any of them very far, not when the robot people refused to provide ransom for one tiny, worthless boat of the very spacers they’d spent the last how many centuries conquering and controlling as the Kingdom grew into a full-fledged _Empire_.

His mother was named Marie. Brave but stubborn, Logan’s old man used to describe her, those times where he would grow silent and stare off into the distant pastures of their homeworld. And it’s the damn truth—she’s the one who lead the revolt that got the prisoners out of the hold and into the emergency bay, and Logan into one of the escape pods, bundled in the arms of the bloodied Prothean that had shouldered herself in as a last-second midwife.

She got him back to his father, all right. But not without the news that Marie’d given her life to ensure the Geth on that freighter couldn’t chase down the fleeing pods. Though Logan never knew her himself, there’s always been that ever-present guilt, nevertheless. The only reason they were on that freighter to begin with was because of the pregnancy—robot law had a code of ethics that mandated she take the early transport back from her shift at the coal plant, an outpost that neighbored the herding planet Logan’s family hailed from.

When Logan was thirteen—by Terrestria standards, at least—the Geth War was finally over, and the robot people welcomed in a new age of galactic-wide oppression and supremacy. The Geth were officially wiped out, and King Robot III ripped the technology that had made them a suitable foe from the burnt remains of their civilization. Six years later, the cycle began again, but this time between the two violent species that lived on Landfall and their only moon, Wreath.

It’s the same story written in the same blood. And it has the robot people’s dirty fingerprints all over it.

Now, Cleave, that’s a much sadder story. Although most skirmishes between Landfall and Wreath started on Wreath itself, it wasn’t long before the fighting grew bigger, nastier, and there was more going on than a simple civil war amongst homeworld races.

Any spacer’ll tell you that Cleave was the first stepping stone toward what is commonly referred to as the robot people’s special brand of full-blown intergalactic conflict. Not a single sector of known space was safe from Landfallians setting up shop for some horn hunting—that is to say, any member of Wreath’s horned race that managed to escape Landfall’s perimeter blockade of the moon. To make matters worse the Wreath resistance, known to most as The Narrative, isn’t much better at playing nice.

When the battle touched down on Cleave, the indigenous population found themselves running from both Landfall and Wreath invaders alike. Separatists like to side with the moonies, yeah, but that doesn’t exempt Wreath forces from what was just as much their fault: decimating the entirety of the planet and its inhabitants, full stop.

As it is, Logan can’t help the bile that rises in the back of his throat the moment Cleave comes into view beyond Rogue’s front window. It’s not a large planet, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in atmospheric residue; countless rock and bits of detritus that might form a formidable ring system by the end of the next millennia. The pinkish glow the surface gives off is due to the thorough ash poisoning in the upper atmosphere, a byproduct of all the chemical warfare Landfall Coalition brought to Cleave for _testing_.  

Logan didn’t bother trying to get some shuteye in the hours since leaving the Boonies, strung as high as he is on news that keeps getting worse and worse. McCoy hasn’t been too forthcoming with the blueprints he keeps in that briefcase of his, though the good doctor laid out the general gist of it. Logan was better off waiting to meet with Mystique to hear the big picture of it all; it saved him the headache of too much time spent contemplating his own death wish as Rogue made the long jump over to Cleave’s sector of space. ‘Sides, Logan is just the taxi service, yeah?

Off to the side of the flight deck, Charles is curled up on the futon in one of the rounded alcoves. That bulky poncho of his is finally making itself useful, it would seem, as tightly wound in it as the kid appears to be—knocked out cold, too. McCoy is at the table, still neck deep in the same papers as earlier. A shame really, Logan can spot sleep deprivation a mile out, and McCoy clearly needs the rest just as much as his friend.

Not long after they’d jumped warp, Logan patched a call through to Scott. In retrospect, he shouldn’t have initiated the sort of transmission that could be traced, not when Rogue had barely skirted the fourth boundary sector outside the Terrestrian Quadrant proper. But he’d kept Scott waiting long enough, and if there is one thing to be said for Logan’s _handler_ , it’s anal levels of professionalism. If Logan didn’t update ‘im regularly, Scott would only assume the worst.

First thing Logan had done was explain, in the briefest of code, what their newest clients are after—getting high-clearance battle plans from Imperial Intelligence straight into resistance hands. Though the transmission was staticy on account of the backend frequency Scott favors, his surprise had been clear as day. What more, it’d made Scott god damn _giddy_.

If Logan were bein’ honest here, he’d have given anything to get his hands ‘round Scott’s throat in that moment. Scott doesn’t get just how much of _Logan’s_ neck is on the line—couldn’t, because this may have been a cloaked transmission, but certain hot words would’ve blipped a fine-tuned radar on any number of the vast Imperial networks that exist out in the black, nowadays.

Logan didn’t mention their close call with the Imperial patrol, either. Though surely Scott would figure it out for himself, knowing the sheer scope of the _importance_ in getting these plans to Wreath. The tide of war has been shifting in Landfall’s favor for at least three years now; any leg-up was worth more than its weight in gold.

According to Scott though, Logan’s worries aren’t over yet. His sources over the circuit say Terrestria has gone completely dark; hundreds of thousands of traffic freights are at a standstill, and atmospheric clearance is jammed even now. Whatever has happened on the Empire homeworld, it isn’t something anyone has seen before. More likely, Logan has the sinking feeling it’s got something to do with his clients—but _why?_

Resolutely, Logan had ended the call with the promise to get to the bottom of it and update Scott again when he could. But even with Rogue humming beneath his boots and her hull close overhead, Logan can’t shake the uncomfortable itching in his gut. There’s a piece to the puzzle that he’s missing.

Just what the fuck is going on?

“Excuse me... Mr. Howlett?” McCoy is looking up from the table now, his hands busy as he stacks the blueprints back into their case. Hesitant, the kid glances from Logan back to the sight of Cleave outside the viewing window—twice the size as it was before as Rogue approaches at a stable speed.

Logan swipes a hand back through his hair and leans forward to begin the tedious process of setting up landing coordinates on the nav table. He sighs. “Spit it out, kid.”

In low power mode, the flight deck is dark enough that the stars beyond Rogue’s windows stand out like sunbleached flecks of sand in an otherwise vast blanket of empty space. Cleave takes front and center bow now, and it’s a wholly grounding ache, the pain it inspires in his chest. Because yeah, _that’s_ what’s worth fighting for. Even with so little of the resistance left, this is what separatists will risk anything to prevent from happening again.

“Are you sure it’s... safe?” McCoy asks, his voice lowering considerably. Though whether it’s for Charles’ sake or for Cleave’s is unclear. “By my calculation, the gaseous toxicants in Cleave’s atmosphere have yet to isotopically degrade significantly since last year’s planetary drones collected field data for this sector.”

Logan throws an elbow over the back of the pilot’s chair, glances back at McCoy with a tense frown. Trust his newly appointed _medical officer_ to take potshots at his only viable plan to make a suicide mission feasible; it’s too bad one suicide mission comes at the expense of another.

“I’m no expert,” Logan drawls. He keeps his annoyance locked down tight—and since when do these two think they know better than the smuggler they’ve god damn _paid_ to get them out of their mess? “But this is our only option. No takesie backsies. We touch down and it’s a clear shot to the resistance base. I know these people, or at least their type, and once they know what you and Poncho over there are packing, they’ll either help you or die tryin’.”

McCoy takes this in stride, nodding. “All right. I trust you, Mr. Howlett.”

It’d help the kid’s cause, maybe, if he didn’t look like he wants nothin’ more than to crawl out of his skin and run right back home to mama. Sheesh—Charles’ earlier outburst aside, Logan’s old enough to know a spacer that’s spent an entire life planet-side when he sees one. Case in point: no experience with bein’ wrong about the territory, all huff and second-guessing him at every turn.

So when it comes to the big open black, that makes the both of them an honorary _kid respect your damn elder_ in Logan’s purview.

“I do my best,” Logan says on a yawn, and stretches his arms upward and back, just for that satisfying pop of released tension. As he stands and rounds the console, he waves a dismissive, vaguely irritated hand at McCoy. “Oh and bub, don’t call me _Mr._ Howlett. You lookin’ for my old man, them’s the doors.”

When Logan crosses the short distance to the futon, Charles’ immediate reaction is to flop over on his front and make a tiny little mournful noise into the stale cushion.

“Right then, up and at ‘em,” Logan orders, purposefully loud, and kicks with no real force at one of the futon’s legs before circling back to the control hub. “Hope you cherished that beauty rest ‘cause you’re likely not seein’ any more of it for a cycle or three. We break orbit in five, and I want both of you at the table, hands where I can see ‘em. You know the deal.”

Charles is surprisingly fast after all is said and done. Once the seriousness of the situation leaks back in through the stupor of someone who’d just slept a few hours away, he obeys without question. McCoy packs his briefcase up tight and makes sure the rest of their luggage is secure before taking his seat again.

Logan turns his gaze back to the view window. Cleave is gaining fast; it won’t be long now.

As he reaches forward to ease the warp lever down to its lowest setting, he notices the exact moment the gauges on his control board go on the fritz.

In his experience, that really only meant one thing— _shit._

Logan jerks forward in his seat, the better to check his blind spots. Just as he’s about to slam down on the reverse warp switch, a fucking _starfighter cruiser_ cuts across his view of Cleave. It’s no longer than Rogue in terms of bulk, but slimmer, with one of those tec grades on its outside coat that gives the illusion of distant stars—once the guise shimmers away, the fighter is just as black as empty space.

There’s no telling how long Logan had been _tailed_. All he can think, in that moment, is that this is the type of fighter meant to hide in plain sight; it pulling between Rogue and her path toward Cleave is no mistake.

It _wants_ to be seen.

“Shit, _fuck_ ,” Logan hisses between his clenched teeth. “There’s no _fucking_ way that’s—“

Oh, but it is.

An alarm goes off in the cargo hold, shrill and bellowing.

Of all the ways to end a cycle. They had to be tailed by The god damn _Phoenix_.

“Mr. Howlett!” Charles calls from the other side of the deck. “Mr. Howlett, what’s _happening_?”

Rogue’s cursory alarm system, is what. But he’d outfitted her with it himself. Best in known space; there’s no reason why she didn’t alert him ahead of time to their new _friend_. Which meant—

“I _knew_ I shouldn’t have trusted her with those Tralfamadorians,” Logan spits. Damn bog monsters hosed the entire interface!

He mops a hand over a dusty radar, and just as he suspected, ship sensors are malfunctioning. The circular _ping_ indicating the fighter’s location is glitching round the washed-out pulse screen at random.

Outside Rogue’s window, the fighter begins to turn sharply toward them. Its head is not unlike the crowned ridges of a particularly nasty dragon that wouldn’t be out of place on the plains of Demimonde. In short: if Logan didn’t get them out of there right quick they were, by all accounts, _fucked_.

It’s perhaps a second, maybe two, before the fighter picks up speed, shooting round Rogue’s starboard side with unmatched speed. Logan has just the mind to initiate Rogue’s cannon release before the first blast rocks her like she’s little more than a paperweight.

_“Mr. Howlett!”_

“Company, starboard side!” Logan shouts. The controls for the dual cannons slide into place on either side of his chair, and he grabs hold. Unfortunately, he’s flying blind here—no radar, no sensors, _squat_. But it didn’t take a genius to pinpoint the origin of the second plasma blast, when it hit.

He fires off two shots, then a third in quick succession. This being the vacuum of space, there’s no noise to tell him if they met their target. Certainly not with every alarm at Rogue’s disposal screaming their worst.

There’s nothing to do but wait—thirty more seconds pass, and Logan’s old heart is slowly climbing its way up his throat. When, suddenly, a different kind of full-ship shake rattles through Rogue’s hull.

There’s a distinct sound, one Logan only recalls from the few times he’s been round planet-side metalwork factories—aging shipyards where junkers go to meet their end crushed flat beneath smash-rigs. A neat, clean tear.

Just like that, Rogue’s entire flight deck begins to capsize.

The cannon sticks jerk from Logan’s hands, and he goes flying forward into the nav table. McCoy’s shrill voice fills the deck—but it doesn’t register. Not when Rogue starts nosediving straight for Cleave.

 

* * *

 

At some point in their free fall—not that Logan is an _expert_ of any kind—he blacked out.

This isn’t immediately obvious when he comes to, a flash fire of bone-deep pain in his right shoulder and a stunner of a headache making his skull throb like nothing else. He doesn’t think much of anything until he groans, gasping for air, and tastes burnt ash on the back of his tongue, the heavy weight of it on his skin—muggy and unclean.

“Shit,” Logan mumbles, eloquent as always.

When he opens his eyes, he’s greeted with the sight of a dark sky and the distant, shifting outline of a forested canopy. The trees are old; reaching down toward the ground with dense, weepy moss. The smell of tree sap is more welcome than the ash, and Logan has to turn his cheek into the dirt, inhaling deeply.

Where the treetops disappear into overgrowth, huge chunks of metal lie suspended in vines and slots between the snaking boughs. Light is fading into dusk, a redish haze that sinks down from the atmosphere; it reflects dully off the metal, and stops Logan cold.

Those haven’t been here long. They’re pieces of Rogue’s hull—he’d recognized the paint anywhere. _Fucking_ shit. How long has Logan... ?

How in the hell had he _survived?_

Another groan rubs roughly up his windpipe. He has to turn over on his left elbow, lift his chest off the ground so his dry heaving doesn’t fuck up his breathing any more than it already has. His entire body feels like one big, ugly ache. S’pose he can thank his old man for bein’ the right type of species to heal unnaturally quick; too bad it hadn’t exactly bred _true_. It might take a full cycle and a half, but the worst of Logan’s breaks and bruises would set themselves straight on their own.

For now, he locks his jaw and forces his breathing to come easier. His senses are giving him too much information much too quick. Wherever he’s ended up, it isn’t with the rest of his ship. The ground is just as overgrown as the canopy; blackened bracken and thorny nightmares eat up most of the leafbed, though the biggest tell has to be the shattered glass sprinkled throughout the thicket. Most of that happens to be etched in noticeable red—Logan’s blood, judging by the look of the cuts along his arms and palms, the sting in his cheeks and the skin above his brow. Because yeah—yeah, he’d flown straight through his front window, hadn’t he?

Glass as thick as that, he’d hate to find out what had broken it in. Impact, most likely. Or the pressure change from Cleave’s atmosphere.

He forces himself to his feet, staggers forward a step. He feels like he should be furious—Rogue was his damn baby, and he couldn’t lie to himself: there likely isn’t much left of her to find. But oddly, Logan only feels... empty. Where any other cycle he would be absolutely livid, the only emotion that manages to trickle in from his hindbrain is _guilt_.

The Phoenix is Logan’s baggage. Ergo, this is his fault.

Hell—his clients, what about them? _Fuck_ , he thinks, the most emphatic, and also the only, thought in his current repertoire.

‘Course, the universe being what it is, soon as the idea crosses his mind—his clients, skewered by slabs of a know-nothing smuggler’s speeder on some dead planet far from home—Logan hears it: a soft sort of sound. Weak, but close.

He weaves through the trees, a slow going process that leaves him once again short of breath. The air, heavy with all the pollutants that make Cleave impossible to live on—not anymore—drapes over his skin like a hot blanket. The sound must have come from the next clustering of trees. A spot of sky is visible through the canopy there, and it allows just enough light to see by.

Logan rounds it quietly; he’s not sure what’s out here with him. Officially, Cleave is unpopulated, but that doesn’t account for lesser organisms that might have adapted to the planet’s current conditions.

That isn’t what Logan finds, though. Because there, propped up against a small outcropping between a set of wide trunks, is _Charles_. He’s breathing fast, too fast, and sweat glistens wetly across his feverish face. Those blue eyes of his, too—they’re much worse for wear, staring off into the trees like Charles isn’t home in his own head.

“Charles?” Logan says, low. If the look of the landscape is anything to go by, they’re somewhere in what resistance coded The Endless Woods, a stretch of woodland that spans a good fourth of the planet. The resistance base would be north from here—toward the mountains that rimmed the colder valleys of the upper pole. Nevertheless, it meant they were far from any help.

Charles doesn’t respond. The kid’s breathing is beginning to worry Logan. He’s no doctor, but this? Could be blood loss, could be shock—both he’d at least seen before.

As Logan creeps closer, he notes the awkward bend of Charles’ right leg. Charles has a trembling fist clenched painfully tight over one thigh, though it’s sure as shit obvious that he’s shaking all over.

_“Charles.”_

That, at least, seems to knock some sense into the kid. Charles blinks several times, until his eyes refocus and he finally _sees_ Logan for the first time since Logan arrived.

“Kid,” Logan breathes. He hesitates briefly before settling into a crouch a short distance away. He doesn’t know Charles that well, so there’s always the chance Charles could be of the kind that becomes rather violent rather fast when their space is invaded—least of all in vulnerable moments such as this. “Status report. Where’s it hurt?”

Charles stares at him for an awful long moment, awful insofar as the kid’s mouth falls open, slack, and whatever color still remaining in his face drains away. Not exactly a good sign.

“L-Logan,” Charles manages, halting. He pulls his lower lip into his mouth, bites down. Hard. Then: “Window. Fell through. After—after you. _Hurts_.”

Logan brings his hands up to hover near Charles’ waist. Inappropriate as it sounds, the sight of that same absurd poncho almost rips a hysterical laugh from his lungs.

“Here?” he prompts, moving his hands toward where Charles’ clenched fingers are damn near ripping the seam from his poncho. The area is just below the meatiest part of his upper leg, and now that Logan is looking, there’s a very obvious discoloration to Charles’ trousers, hidden beneath his hand, and the area of fabric where the poncho drapes over the same spot. Not so much drapes, really, because the fabric in fact stretches over something angular and _big_.

Logan pulls in a breath, exhales. “Okay,” he says, lower still. It’s like calming a wild animal, he knows; or at least, some distant part of him does. “I’m gonna need to take a look here.” He jerks his chin toward Charles’ thigh. “You all right with that?”

It’s like a switch—more of the life returns to Charles’ eyes, and he’s miles more present than before. There’s something else, too; worry, trepidation, anxiety, all bleeding out on the kid’s pale, sweat-drenched face.

“Y-yes. Yes,” comes Logan’s answer after another overlong moment. Charles’ voice peters out then, and the same noise as before replaces it: soft and horribly pained. It doesn’t even appear that Charles realizes he’s making it.

The poncho, when he lifts it up, is not as bulky as Logan imagined it would be. He sees the glass first—a thick shard from Rogue’s window, and a large one at that—then his eyes follow the slide of it down through flesh and blood. So much blood. Charles’ trousers had torn like tissue paper when the glass impaled his thigh. Actually, scratch that—when Charles fell on the glass.

Around them, the outcropping is littered with more broken glass than where Logan had fallen. It accounts for at least half of Rogue’s viewing window, he supposes—and a lot of it largely intact. Charles just so happens to be the lucky bastard who dropped right on top of it.

“We’ll need to stop the bleeding,” Logan mutters, mostly to himself. “Charles, think you can slip out of this?” He pinches two fingers in the poncho’s hem. “We can use it to apply pressure and make a bandage. I could take the glass out now—“ and here he sizes it up, calculating; it ran a little over a foot out top, and several inches past the bottom of Charles’ thigh. “But you really don’t want that. You could bleed out.”

Charles only stares. Remains quiet, eyes wide and exhausted. He doesn’t say anything more, though he makes a point of meeting Logan’s gaze and offering a tired, decisive nod.

Logan has to bat Charles’ shaking hands away from the hem. Careful, he begins to slowly peel it upward. He’s hardly lifted it halfway up Charles’ stomach when he stops cold.

Quite suddenly, Logan feels physically ill. “Fuckin’ hells, kid. This whole time?”

Charles eyes are rimmed in red now. Keening quietly, he can only manage a slight jerk of his head.

All this time... Hank’s hovering, the evasive answers, the _poncho_...

All to hide this: the very fact that Charles is _pregnant._ And shit—far enough along to be concerning.

Well. Logan’s job just got that much harder.


End file.
